Monday, April 9, 2012

ISN Logistics

When students come into my room every day, they look to see if there's anything to glue in in the wire bins I always have out - if there is, they get right to it.  I rarely have tardy students since they can get right together with their friends to glue in pages.
Wire bins & custom glue bottle holder
 
Sometimes I have them glue in several days worth of ISN pages at a time, other days it's just today's pages.

For students who have been absent, I simply print out the entry from my classroom blog and tape it to a weekly calendar - a time saver, since I'm not typing/writing the same thing twice.  Each day, I list what we did (including any ISN pages glued in), what was due that day, and upcoming due dates.  I have a weekly calendar for the current week and the previous week that I just switch back and forth.  I also post my before/after school availability on the calendar.

This week's calendar
Last week's calendar
 
I store extra copies of each assignment in the hanging folder crate shown below, which is right by my weekly calendars.  When students come back from an absence, they can easily get all the assignments they need without any intervention by me.
ISN assignment crate




14 comments:

  1. Thank you so much, I've already learned a ton from your first few posts and can't wait for your next posts!

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  2. Great organization! Do you have any pictures of what your students' notebooks look like? I read about not having the students cut, but the papers folding and I wasn't sure quite what that looked like. Thanks!

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    1. I'll post a video of what each folded insert looks like within a few days...

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  3. THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH! I have been thinking about using ISN but putting it off due to the formatting issues and the time I would have to put into coming up with workable solutions (I am a new teacher...) and both sets of templates are going to make it possible for me! I will let you know how they work out in a biology classroom and if you would like, send you any changes/addition that I make in order to adapt to my subject.
    Thanks again!
    Elisa

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    1. Glad to help, and I'd defintely take any suggested changes you come up with!

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  4. If I may add...
    One additional tool for implementing an ISN classroom is the book by Marcarelli " Teaching Science with Interactive Notebooks" (Corwin, 2010). ISBN 978-1412954037.
    Also, the Reference section provides several journal articles that could be used to make the case with one's department if one needs to get departmental approval to shift to ISN or would like to expend the use of ISN to all the sciences in his/her school.

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    1. I completely agree - Marcarelli's book is THE book to buy for an excellent ISN resource.

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  5. What information are the students gluing into their ISN'S? Does this allow more time for experimentation/discussion?

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    1. KR - I have students glue in pretty much every assignment for my class into their notebook.

      ISNs don't directly allow for more time for for experimentation/discussion, but they do facilitate it. For example, when we review an assignment in class, I'll ask the students to open their notebooks to, let's say, page 27. Every student has glued in the assignment on that page - no shuffling through folders, no lost papers, no need to make extra copies...

      Hope this answered your question!

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  6. Where did you get your large calendar?

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  7. Do you only use elmer's regular school glue? I use glue sticks in the classroom, but they seem to peel out. I dont really want to wait for things to dry to be able to work.

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    1. You need to teach the students to use small dots instead of toaster strudel to attach pages when using Elmer's glue.

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